[===[TASK]=== African minifaction buildings]

5 hours ago, Diatryma said:

So how look like them?

I'm assuming you mean how do the "Black Hebrews" look like?

Keep in mind they shouldn't be conflated with the "Black Hebrew Israelites", an extreme fringe group of Afro Americans that aren't recognized as Jews by the greater Jewish community. The Ethiopian Jews on the other hand are a genuine Afro-Semitic population of an ancient stock, and recognized as such by the world's Jewish community. They're called Beta Israel, but are also referred with the derogative "falasha" or falash mura"  

There's a number of differing theories about how they got there, all quite plausible. There's the tradition (national narrative) that says they come from the Israelite companions of Menelik I, the first Solomonic ruler of Ethiopia, son of Queen Makeda of Sheba and King Solomon. Another tradition claims that they descend from the tribe of Dan escaping various destruction events in ancient Israel. Another tradition states that they descend from a Jewish community at Elephantine on the border of Lower Nubia in South Egypt, who escaped the campaigns of Psamtik I or II, passing through Kush and entering Ethiopia. There was actually a synagogue on Elephantine... Other Jews are said to have been settled on the border of Lower Nubia during the Ptolemaic period as well, said to be allies of Cleopatra, and fled into Kush, and then Ethiopia during the Roman conquest of Egypt. There's also an undeniable relation to the Yemeni Jews. A number of obscure Jewish Kingdoms existed in ancient Ethiopia (see testimony of Eldad the Danite), and at least some of the Ethiopians that converted to Christianity in the 4th century were originally Jewish. Some of the Ethiopian Jews were medieval Christians who converted back to Judaism, so it gets really complicated. They're not homogenous, and they're also closely related to other, Christian Semitic populations of Ethiopia like the Amhara and Tigrinya. After the overthrow of Haile Selassie I, the Ethiopian Jews started facing a lot more persecution and marginalisation under the communist Derg regime, and they emigrated to Israel en masse, during several waves, aided by Israel (Operation Moses and Operation Solomon). Currently more than 130.000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel as naturalized citizens, virtually the entire population...

Anyway, this is what they look like

Beta Israel, the black Jews of Ethiopia:

Spoiler

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_Israel

 

If you're interested in black Jews, there's also the extraordinary claim of Jewish descend from the Lemba people of South Africa and Zimbabwe. Genetic studies actually confirmed Middle Eastern ancestry among a significant portion of the population. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemba_people

[0 A.D. - The Grand Vision]

27 minutes ago, Trinketos said:

I think the Mayans are contemporaries with the Greeks

They are indeed... The rise of the Mayans begins just after the collapse of Mycenaean Greece, but predates the advent of the archaic period, at 1000 BC, and continues into the classical and Hellenistic periods... Monumental architectures starts around 500BC in the mid-Pre Classic period, the classic period starts around 250 AD and continues to 900 AD. But the last independent Maya city didn't fall until 1697! They have a loooong history...

@Wesley You also have to keep in mind that all the civilizations currently in vanilla are interconnected. They might not all have faced each other in battle, but at least they all sort of knew about each other and traded either directly, or indirectly. Romans and Chinese for example knew about each other, if only vaguely. 

[===[TASK]=== African minifaction buildings]

1 hour ago, Diatryma said:



In terms of territory, both of those maps depict the Aksumite empire at it's height during the 6th century AD. The Kingdom of Saba is not known to have ever exerted political influence in East Africa.

The Biblical Kingdom of Sheba is tentatively identified with the Kingdom of Saba, but Ethiopia has a much stronger national narrative claiming to be the seat of the ancient kingdom, and currently possessing the Ark of the Covenant, housed in Axum. Personally, I think the history is too obscured, intertwined and semi-mythical to try to draw absolute conclusions. I remember reading about Sabaean inscriptions from that altar in Ethiopia explicitly mentioning the "red Sabaeans" and the "black Hebrews" essentially living in the same place. The black Hebrews here refers to the Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel/Falasha), who are thought to have established themselves in Ethiopia around this time. It's all a bit fuzzy..    

[===[TASK]=== African minifaction buildings]

1 hour ago, Diatryma said:

question Saba was in Africa or was in south Arabian peninsula?

The Sabaean Kingdom or the Kingdom of Saba was a South Arabian (Yemeni) kingdom that flourished from the 8th century BC (or earlier) to the 3rd century AD, with a capital city at Ma'rib. They were an extraordinary people and another one of my personal favourites. They were master masons, built some of the world's first proper high rise apartments, were engineering experts (ma'rib dam) and rich from the Indian Ocean and Red Sea trade in incense and myrrh among other things. They actually fought a war with Rome, with an unclear outcome, at the same time that the Romans were fighting a war with the Kushites in the first century BC.

They had a very strong African connection, and explicitly Sabaean artefacts, inscriptions and architecture are known in Eritrea and Ethiopia, during the time of the African Kingdom of D'mt. It has been thought in the past that D'mt was an offshoot of the Sabaeans, but these ideas are being abandoned. Sabaean influence is undeniable though. African and South Arabian populations mixed in Ethiopia during the 1st millennium BC. During the later Ethiopian/Eritrean Aksumite Empire, the same people that destroyed the Kushites, the Aksumites actually also conquered South Arabia, then under Himyarite hegemony, (early 6th century AD), including Saba, and even attempted to conquer Mecca using war-elephants, but failed. So there's a lot of back and forth, that has been going on for thousands of years. Even today, Eritrea is absorbing the bulk of the refugees from the war in Yemen, and in the past, Ethiopians, Eritreans and Djiboutis worked in Yemen in considerable numbers. They're all distantly/vaguely related, somehow. 

To be honest, I want Sabaeans more than I want Garamantes, lol  In a perfect world, it would be like this:

Early Arabs (north and south):

• Nabataeans (Northern Arabia)
• Sabaeans (South Arabia)

Proto Berbers (West and East):

• Numidians (North Algeria/Tunisia)
• Garamantes (Fezzan/South Libya) 

 

Sabaeans, mmmmm....

Temple of Awwam at Ma'rib:

 

Sabaean script:

 

Sabaean bronze:

 

 

Libation altar:

 

Incense burner 

 

 

Traditional Yemeni architecture, a tradition dating back to the BC period:

 

 

Examples of explicit Sabaean influence in Ethiopia:

A Sabaean altar in a temple to Almaqah, the Sabaean supreme god, in Tgray, Ethiopia. Sabaean inscriptions clearly visible:

 

Sabaean inscriptions from the temple at Yeha, Tigray, Ethiopia. Yeha is thought to have been the capital city of the Kingdom of D'mt:

[===[TASK]=== African minifaction buildings]

@Wesley I definitely think the Qanat should be an important aspect of this civ. But not a wonder. I would love for the game to be able to determine fertile and non-fertile lands on maps, preferably with a gradient (0-100% fertility). Maybe it could be tied to the current tile system for specific ground textures. Basically deserts would be non fertile, and green zones fertile. Then civs like the Garamantes, but also Persians, Ptolemies, Kushites and Seleucids would have special advantages by being able to farm in the desert using these types of qanat systems (or Saqiyas). Could add nice biome-based strategies.

 

Garamantes had some "monumental" architecture. Nothing too impressive, but there's still suitable candidates for wonders. Particularly the Al Hatia tombs at Germa:

The wonder could just be a small collection of these things?

 

 

A better example of monumental architecture is the central temple of Germa (GER001.3), but that should obviously serve as the reference for the temple...

 

 

Examples of Greek influence, (faux Ionian and Corinthian capitals):

 

 

 

This structure, the mausoleum at Qasr Watwat, could easily function as the Iberian venerated statue in-game:

 

Some examples of domestic architecture (homes/workshops). Some of it was multistoried...:

Elite:

 

Lower class:

 

"

"Batiment Garamantique fouille a Saniat Jibril par Daniels"

 

Germa (or Garama), and other Garamantian sites:

 

"Site-urbain-de-Qasr-bin-Dougba":

 

 

 

Germa, the capital:

 

 

Garamantian chariots:

 

People:

 

A skirmisher armed with javelins and a round shield (typical Libyan feathers in hair?) 

 

Interesting stuff:

https://historum.com/threads/the-kingdom-of-the-garamantians.118859/#lg=_xfUid-9-1550497430&slide=0

https://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2011/november/castles-in-the-desert-satellites-reveal-lost-cities-of-libya

https://www.world-archaeology.com/features/garamantes-libya/

https://www.livius.org/articles/place/garamantes/

 

[0 A.D. - The Grand Vision]

51 minutes ago, Wesley said:

The eland thing is a New Scientist paper and a Scientific American paper. Something about genetics; a marker common in domesticates that's rare in never domesticated species. Years ago. The western plains zoo in Australia has a small herd and a plaque mentioning it. That's what put me onto the papers.
Several miniatures game company's have done eland chariots. The animal is easily tamed.

How interesting... Are you sure those papers weren't about Southern African elands? We really can't add something like that without proper primary sources. 

But they do seem to be quite docile indeed...

 

54 minutes ago, Wesley said:

https://hiveminer.com/Tags/cart%2Ckenya

I only see donkeys there... Donkeys were widespread in the Sahara. I think they even originate from there.

 

 

[0 A.D. - The Grand Vision]

@Wesley, the Garamantes are actually on my personal shortlist for another African civilization. References would be tremendously challenging though. But not impossible...

We start talking about Garamantes and start sharing references from the 10th message in this thread:

 

 

They were actually first suggested back in 2011:

 

9 hours ago, Wesley said:

Only 5 small cities in central and west Libya.

There's a lot more than 5 small cities. At least 8 important towns/cities and over a hundred fortress settlements! Probably hundreds of more smaller and/or as of yet undiscovered/unexcavated settlements... There was even a Roman style bath house and Hellenistic influenced cut stone temple in Germa as well as elaborate monumental tombs with Hellenistic/Coastal North African influences. And they were fully literate as well! https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/11/111111-sahara-libya-lost-civilization-science-satellites/ 

 

9 hours ago, Wesley said:

One other thing makes them distinct, they domesticated the eland and bred a draft animal, possibly the giant eland (Taurotragus derbianus). Its not found in Libya today but there are reports and pictures of eland drawn carts and chariots. 

I'm not sure where you got that from? African Elands did indeed exist and were hunted by Saharan people, but I've never seen anything about domestication, let alone it being used as a draft animal. Perhaps a misinterpretation of crude cave paintings of horse drawn chariots? 

 

9 hours ago, Wesley said:

The lakes had crude docks, boats, big fish and one lake cluster in the Sahara had whales! (over in Egypt) The bulk of the lakes dried up at the end of the ice age but some were still there in 0 AD, brackish I suspect. All are gone now becoming salt pans and sand filled depressions. 

There were indeed still a few lakes so they should be able to fish, maybe transport troops, but not much more than that.

But the whales date to more than 40 million years ago... It's a little bit beyond our timeframe  

 

9 hours ago, Wesley said:

As the sahara dried out the sand covered almost everything. You can stand on a city and not know it. Most useful new archaeology is discovered thanks to satellite imagery and sand penetrating radar

Exactly... Are you familiar with Dhar Tichitt (and Dhar Walata and Dhar Nema) in the West African Sahara? More than 500 stone settlements dating from c. 2000 BC to 300 BC. Early agro-pastoralists. They were ancestral to the Soninke people, who later went on the found the Ghana Empire (modern day Mali/Mauritania) in the early medieval period. 

 

 

[The Kingdom of Kush: A proper introduction [Illustrated]]

@Wesley

“Dr” Clyde Winters is a fraudulent piece of garbage. Black Supremacist trash. Worthless scum… He has no academic expertise in ancient languages whatsoever. Some of his writings include:

• The Ancient Celts and Vikings were Black People
• The Sumerians were Black
• The Black Greeks
• The Blacks of China's First Civilization: The Xia
• Ancient African Kings of India
• African Empires in Ancient America (2013)
• The Ancient Black Civilizations of Asia (2013)
• Atlantis in Mexico: The Mande Discovery of America (2013)
• Meroitic Writing and Literature (2013)

He also claims that the ancient inhabitants of Atlantis, as well as King James I of England were black... 

In addition to Meroitic, he also claims to have deciphered:

• Indus (Harappan) script
• Sumerian
• Olmec script

Clyde Winters is a lier and a fraud. Nothing he writes is peer reviewed. 

The precursors of the Meroitic language have been spoken for thousands of years before Buddhism even existed. It's mostly Nilo-Saharan, evolving out of Proto-Nilo-Saharan with Afro Asiatic influences, and has nothing to do with Gandhara…

If you want to learn about Meroitic, I suggest looking up the works of Dr. Claude Rilly, "Doctor in Egyptology and linguistics, and director of the French archaeological mission of Sedeinga (SEDAU), Co-editor of the Meroitic Newsletters, Member of the board of the International Society for Nubian Studies and of the Sudan Archaeological Research Society, he is also research fellow at the CNRS"

Quote

"Dr. Rilly is regarded as one of the world’s top specialists in Meroitic language and writing, about which he wrote his PhD thesis at the EPHE.(a higher education institution of training and research in humanities and social sciences). His research fields concern African linguistics, historical linguistics, Meroitic studies and North Eastern Sudanic languages in a comparative approach."

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-meroitic-language-and-writing-system/D1534C93DCCA955D82E0594CE92598FC

 

Clyde Winters on the other hand is a major source of misinformation. A very toxic individual. A disrupter. One of many ugly stains on the internet. He makes a living out of duping gullible people of African decent. I have come across his garbage on numerous occasions, and I shudder every time. Basically I hate him…

This website is dedicated to debunking individuals like him:   
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Clyde_Winters 

[Ideas ?]

4 hours ago, sarcoma said:

The problem with promotion is that army focuses fire on that invincible unit for a second or so

 

11 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I don't see this as so much a big issue for balance, since all players have this equally.

As wow says, It's the same for everyone, so it doesn't affect gameplay.

Anyway, if ranged units spread fire, this would be even less of a thing to think about. 

[Wildfire Games is participating in FOSDEM!]

Well, to be fair, it would probably have sounded a lot better in French. I actually thought it was an interesting insight into some of the bottlenecks, that non-programmers like myself have difficulty understanding. Thanks @vladislavbelov. By the way, I never saw this video from Capitole du Libre before... Of course I liked the part where you talk about Kush   I liked @stanislas69 part as well.

 

 Awkward video thumbnail...  

[Zapotecs 1.0]

@Lion.Kanzen where art thou? I miss your spanglish...

The man seems to be MIA since January... 

[Ideas ?]

3 minutes ago, Emperior said:

@Sundiata I think all types of unit should kill nearest but still hero would be nearst. ;p Which means it wouldn't help that much thats why "spam block would be nice".

If they randomly target 1 out 10 of the nearest units (in range), fire would automatically be spread across the 10 nearest units, not just the hero in front, who is only 1/10th of the selection. If 100 archers are in range to fire on an enemy group of 9 units and a dancing hero in front, the hero would only receive 1 out of ten arrows. Which means 10 arrows target the hero, and the other 90 arrows target the 9 other units within range, but behind the hero. 

[Ideas ?]

Ranged units should randomly pick 1 out of the 10 nearest enemy units to attack.

This will literally solve the issue and we'll have more organic ranged combat as well.

Currently ranged units always target the nearest unit. That's the core of the problem. They should spread fire.

[Wikipedia: "blocked from editing" ???]

@Gurken Khan, Yeah it was just really weird... And it's pretty common apparently, and has been upsetting to more than a few people (I saw some pages full of scolding tirades against admins casually blocking thousands of IP addresses)

But then I realized in my case it really wasn't a random dragnet, but actually personal, and I was like:

Spoiler

Anyone? Anyone?? Ok, I'll just take a seat...

 

The guy replied again, by the way. First he sort of apologized to me for his heavy handed warning, but his second message still kind of implies that he thinks I did it. He told me not to worry about it though, because it was "some time ago", as if he "forgives" me for my passed transgressions... what an a__ hole...

[Suggestions for 0 A.D.]

31 minutes ago, mysticjim said:

Hello all

I love all of that!

Especially number 1 has always seemed like a no-brainer to me.

Having small icons of crossed swords to indicate battle-events where more than 100 units died over x amount of minutes could also be a nice extra.

[Ideas ?]

@feneur, the dancing thing is indeed quite a disruptive part of many MP matches. It reduces the overall strategy of the game in favor of obsessive compulsive unit micro. It's something that many people have been complaining about for a while. Not an easy fix, surely, but definitely worth the attention. I don't know to what extent @borg-'s mod addresses this issue?

[Should fortresses have a territory root?]

34 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

How exactly is that different from 0AD? Besides that you can pay for sentries to add firepower, you can also put 'dedicated' units in the tower.

I often do that on 'hot' borders, for firepower, capture prevention and repairs.

I think the current way 0AD handles garrisoning units in towers is really great, and I also use it for the same reasons as you do. My question is about the default arrows that don't add population. I'm not necessarily opposed to it though. There's just a logical flaw in ungarrisoned towers and fortresses firing arrows, implying someone's home, yet still loosing it to gaia when the CC falls because of the lack of a territory root. Just exploring possibilities. 

[13th Century Europe Mod - In Development]

@Bigtiger Oh man, that looks so good... These biomes will really help spruce up 0AD's maps!

 

[Wikipedia: "blocked from editing" ???]

14 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:

Why would people be anonymous on WikiLeaks ? Everything on Wikipedia can be considered dissident in a given country

Sure, I get that. But in my opinion who says what is very relevant information. I tend to be innately distrustful of people who try to convince me of something while hiding their identity. 

Whistleblowers are a special case, but even then it's important to do your due diligence and independently verify the claims in so far as that's possible. 

Also, could you imagine our legal systems working like that? Guilt by association is an ugly thing. So are dragnets. Still not entirely sure about what happened though.

Anyway, I got a response... My IP seems to be conflated with that of a user called Michaelcogbill. 

 

[Wikipedia: "blocked from editing" ???]

Ok guys, anyway, thanks a lot for helping me figure out what was going on! 

Sorry if I sounded a bit edgy, I'm just a little sensitive about false accusations (bad experiences...). 

[Wikipedia: "blocked from editing" ???]

5 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

I'd suggest just trying that, before you're lamenting over spilled milk which actually might not even be spilled.

AFAIK those ip-bans aren't very precise and I guess the handling is automatic, so maybe it doesn't come down to bad character traits of those admins. They even told you several times to create an account/log in to avoid being caught up in a banned ip range...

 

4 minutes ago, Nescio said:

If you don't have a Wikipedia account yet, register one. If you do but your identity has been compromised, request a new one. Vandalism is a serious problem on Wikipedia (thousands of pages are vandalized daily), therefore some articles are protected and sometimes IP addresses are blocked.

I was able to create an account without a problem, it seems (so far). I left a message on Robvanvee's talk page, asking why my IP address was blocked. That's not my issue though. They accused my IP address of vandalism!

They didn't tell me to create an account several times to avoid being caught up in a banned ip range in advance. They blocked me first, only to tell me 3 months later,  and then told me to create an account to avoid being blocked again in the future. It's just insulting and unsettling. I didn't vandalize anything! They just told me I vandalized something, knowing full well that they're banning IP's by the thousands, which means they also know full well that there is probably a less than 0.1% chance that I was actually vandalizing anything. They should never do something like that. Don't accuse people if you know they didn't do anything. At least have the common decency to apologize for the inconvenience and explain that they know you probably didn't do anything. 

Look at wildfire games for example. See how upset people get for being banned even when they actually did something wrong. Now imagine for example how upset people would be if 0AD's admins just decide to ban everyone from Germany because a random German account said a bad word, or ban every Verizon users for the same reason... 

 

23 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

so maybe it doesn't come down to bad character traits of those admins.

A lot of people are very upset/outraged by this. Including actual contributors who have left wikipedia because this. People even get permanently banned because of cartel like actions by some of the admins. The arrogance is serious in some of those admins... How can an individual casually ban thousands of IP's and then be totally blasé about it when so many of their innocent victims are understandably angry. And they award themselves titles and tags for their "valuable" contributions to the community. Yuk... 

 

I still don't understand why in the world people without an account should be allowed to edit anything. You can't even do that on Wildfire Games Forum.

2 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:

It makes sense to me. Everywhere you go on the web you are being tracked. You can do like most people and ignore it, but some people just don't. They take caution in every website they visit, make sure to never use JavaScript coming from sources they don't trust, use Tor to prevent their network traffic from being intercepted, (Imagine going to the mall with tunnels between each house on the way instead of taking let's say, a car.

Having the right to edit pages without signing in allow you to keep that anonymity.

I don't understand that. Why would somebody be entitled to anonymity when they are editing the worlds most comprehensive encyclopedia. Unless you're some kind of a political dissident, why would anybody be allowed to be anonymous when editing one of the most frequented sources of information in the world. That's a recipe for disaster, and one of the reasons wikipedia gets a bad rap. It's really inappropriate. It's an encyclopedia, not Chatroulette... 

[Wikipedia: "blocked from editing" ???]

3 hours ago, cloud9 said:

Wikipedia bans IP ranges as opposed to specific IPs usually. It’s unlikely you or your machine did the vandalism.

Jesus Christ, you're right! These people are blocking thousands of IP addresses at a time because of individual offenders, and they get rewarded for it too!

 

14 hours ago, Sundiata said:

Or did Wikipedia just block every vodafone user who lives in a 100 km radius of Accra because some snotnose messed with one of their pages? 

I thought this was a ridiculous assumption but it seems to be what actually happened... Wow... I'm speechless.

This definitely affects the way I see Wikipedia... There's a ton of justifiably upset and even outraged wikipedia users and editors who have been caught up in these kind of dragnet operations. And the Admins doing the blocking, literally blocking thousands of people at a time because of a single rotten apple, are super arrogant and dismissive! What a bunch of @#$%ers... 

Why in the world would you be allowed to edit anything, anywhere, without having an account in the first place. I get that wikipedia is bit special, but this is just stupid!

[Wikipedia: "blocked from editing" ???]

18 minutes ago, nani said:

In the worst case maybe you have a virus and  was using your email to create a legit Wikipedia account to edit stuff /:

Are such viruses common on MacBooks? I've never had messages about a virus before, and I'm not the most risky internet user either...

Maybe my phone? But I use that even less for anything... Just WhatsApp and random google searches... Nothing risky...

[Wikipedia: "blocked from editing" ???]

1 hour ago, Imarok said:

geoip mostly shows the location pretty rough only.

ok, thanks.

Any Idea on what the rest means? Because the IP address they mention does match mine. Supposedly the message is from 17 November 2018, 3 months ago (which is also weird), so if that's true I guess my IP address hasn't changed since then. So I can assume it is genuinely addressed to me, which is so weird, because I've never tried to change anything on wikipedia before, let alone pages for a music album I never even listened to... My IP address isn't shared with anyone, and no one has physical access to my laptop or phone, ever... Neither to my network. 

It's just a bit startling, because when I look up the warning messages, I got the most severe warning in those respective categories. Like a "category 4 warning" or something:

 

Considering that was 3 months ago, I might already be blocked, without warning, as the message says...

That Robvanvee dude, the guy who sent me the message is a member of the "Counter Vandalism Unit", and he even has an "Anti Vandalism Barnstar", whatever that may mean... I don't know this guy or why he is targeting my IP address. I think this is all very strange...

I just thought someone here might know a little more about how these aspects of wikipedia work, because there wasn't even an option to appeal this.

I wanted to create an account and do some work on their Kushite wiki pages, because they're a mess, but I wonder how that will go down if the first thing those people see is an IP address that is flagged for vandalism...  

[Wikipedia: "blocked from editing" ???]

I'm a little confused about something, it's probably nothing, but maybe someone can clarify this for me. I opened wikipedia today and saw that I had an old message that I've never seen before. Strange because I don't have, nor have I ever had an account there. It said "You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you vandalize Wikipedia, as you did at Kamikaze (Eminem album).  Robvanvee 07:42, 17 November 2018 (UTC)".

So naturally I'm like, huh? what? I don't even listen to Eminem, and I've never even been on that page before... It said that if it's a "shared IP address" I should create an account, to avoid this in the future... Huh?

Also, how come if I check the geolocation of my IP address it says I live in Accra, which is not where I live... Not even the correct region? Or did Wikipedia just block every vodafone user who lives in a 100 km radius of Accra because some snotnose messed with one of their pages? 

"Wiki Loves Africa", hahaha, ok ...